Unconventional
by Mystic25
Summary: My "Choices" series originally had another chapter two, but I gipped it for something longer. However I've found it again so here's the unpublished "chapter two" of "Choices" that never got posted


TITLE: Unconventional  
AUTHOR: Mystic25  
EMAIL: yellowrubberduck31@hotmail.com  
  
RATING: PG   
  
A/N: Okay when I first started writing "Choices" I wrote an entirely different chapter two then what became chapter two "Without Consent" I didn't post this version of the chapter because I thought it was too short. But a few days ago I found this handwritten version in my notebook, and finally decided to type it up and submit it. Choices 14 is about more then halfway complete, this is just something for ya'll until I get it up.  
  
A/N#2: For those who have never read my "Choices" series, if you wish to check it out it's here at fanfiction.net, but I think this piece could stand alone as well.If you haven't read the series, I have invented a thing at Manticore in which X series males were forced to interbred with X series females, it's not in the show. I made it up. For everyone whose read Choices, this takes place after the first chapter, but before "Without Consent" I wrote it around the time "The Kids are Aiight" first aired.  
  
  
A/N#3: This is from Max's point-of-view  
  
*****  
  
SEATTLE  
FOGGLE TOWERS  
2:15 AM  
  
Through a haze my ultra heightened ears pick up the faint sounds of creaking. As I come around to full consciousness my first, almost immediate reaction is to check the baby monitor on the night table.  
  
There are no signs of my one-month-old son being in distress, and I almost fall back asleep, thinking that this revved up super solider brain of mine has become too damn paranoid. *Almost* is the key word here.  
  
I sit up again, once more hearing a noise. It sounded like a door being opened. I quietly slip out of bed so as not to awaken Logan. Padding barefoot through the expanse of our bedroom I walk through its doorway and into the living room.  
  
All is quiet, and there is a faint hum of traffic from the streets below /You're loosin' it girl/ Another sound reaches my ears, and it was then that I noticed a dark silhouette in front of the large picture window that overlooked the Seattle skyline.  
  
Now what I did next was either my Manticore training kicking in, or my maternal instinct to protect my family that was still asleep in the pre-dawn hours. Which ever it was, the end result was that I hurled myself upon the intruder, sending us both reeling to the floor. Whoever he was he was strong, because he quickly jumped up, sending me flying backwards onto the floor.  
  
I quickly recovered and then felt his large hands grasp my arms. Needless to say, I fought back, hard.  
  
"Max it's me" he finally spoke  
  
That voice, it sounded familiar. I yanked myself out of his grip, flipping on the small lamp on the end table. I squinted momentarily before looking up into the face of-  
  
"Zack!" my voice was surprised. I was taken aback at the sight of my big brother. The one who I thought had ditched America for the safety of Canada.  
  
"What the hell are you doin' here?" I demand hugging him fiercely.  
  
"Thanks for the sentiment" Zack states dryly, hugging me back.  
  
I pull back to look at him "You don't have any phony sentimentality remember?" I reply and added "I wouldn't have jumped you if you would have actually knocked instead of using the silent entry method"  
  
"My way is more effective" was all Zack said, touching my face with one hand, as I did the same to him.  
  
"How'd you find out where my crib was?" I ask  
  
"I asked your friends" was my brother's reply  
  
This made me smile "Mr. Dark and Silent finally cracked and asked people for knowledge?" I teased him in a tone I had used many times when I was nine.  
  
Zack pulls my hand away and examines my jade wedding band on my left hand "Apparently its all true" he released my hand, and let go of my face as well.  
  
All the time I was conversing with Zack I never once heard my baby cry, which is weird for me, considering I'm a revved up new mother. Logan must've though it was weird too because he soon came out of the bedroom  
  
"Max, he's been crying for five minutes. What is going-" he stopped in mid sentence upon his entry to the living room, his eyes adapting the same confused look as me when I first realized that it was Zack who had broken in here tonight.  
  
"Kinda late for a visit Zack" there was just a hint of assertiveness in his tone. Logan and Zack never had any common ground.  
  
"Could you go get him please baby?" I ask Logan changing the subject to end the thickness in the air "He might be hungry"  
  
Logan looks and Zack for a long moment, then me, before finally doing what I ask, disappearing towards the nursery.  
  
I turn back towards Zack and notice he is now examining the photos that line the bookshelf. There is an 8 X 10 of Logan and me the day we got married. Beside that is one of me, Kendra and Cindy taken when I was still pregnant with Jess. Cindy's holding a sonogram that proved I was carrying a boy. It still cracks me up the way she "proved" it to us in the beginning. In another smaller frame is the actual sonogram of Jess taken at three months. Then comes the one that is one of the best ones in my mind. It is of all of us the day I brought the baby home from Metro. Bling was there, with a couple of friends for a "Welcome to parenthood" party. Logan has his arm around me, as we sat on the couch. I hold our son in his first set of baby clothes, his tiny newborn glory revealed to the world with his grayish eyes, that were beginning to turn brown like mine, peering at his new digs. Our smiles are almost surreal, a moment of happiness that seemed out of place considering who we are. This isn't picket-fenced suburbia.  
  
It is this one that Zack looks the longest at. He picks it up and examines it for a second before turning back to me "How old is he?"  
  
"Almost six weeks" I answer right before Logan re-emerges, carrying the subject of our conversation. His face is slightly red-faced from his crying.  
  
"He just needed a change" Logan spoke in hushed tones to me.  
  
I smile and touch my son's head "That's good 'cause mommy's bank don't like to function so late"  
  
Logan laughs slightly at my remark, and in slow movements carries the baby over to Zack. "Jesse" he holds up the baby so he is at eye level with my brother. "This is mommy's big brother, your uncle Zack" Uncle Zack, whether Logan liked it our not Zack was family, and I was glad for his declaration, despite his feelings, wanting our baby to know of his family.  
  
"So whatcha think Uncle?" I try to lighten the mood with this proclamation to my brother.  
  
Zack didn't take to it "You named him Jesse" it wasn't a question.  
  
I nod "Honor for her" my eyes are moist with unshed tears. I lowered them to the floor. When I raised them again I noticed Zack's eyes shine ever so slightly as well.   
  
He is drawn back to Manticore, the place not of black or white, but shit muddling gray. Zack felt that he had a duty to me and the others in our unit. And when he couldn't save Jesse or her child, he believed it to be one of the most ultimate betrayals to us, short of being used for his seeds for fathering his own sisters' children.   
  
I remember how after we were all forced to watch Jess frizzle to ashes in the bonfire Zack followed me almost everywhere, demanding that I take extra precaution not to draw bad attention to myself, sometimes taking the blows for me if I slipped up, lying to save my ass from a Manticore beat down.  
  
The night we escaped into the woods Zack hissed at me that I should never stop running, that we all should remain unattached because relationships would only impair our judgment and endanger innocent people. I wasn't aware of what he meant then, because I had trained that emotions were weakness. But now that I have been out in this messed up, but real world, I get what my big brother meant.  
  
Zack wanted me to remained detached, because he had felt emotions, love towards us all, and had Manticore spit on that love by making him incest his baby sisters. Jesse died in childbirth because of an unseen problem with the baby, passed over by an inexperienced base doctor. And after that Zack didn't want to care anymore, not wanting emotions in him to rip his heart out again watching his sister die and be removed from the earth in such a harsh way. He had become what Lydecker had wanted, an emotionless, robotic solider.   
  
But not me. I managed to get past that, find friends who allowed me to feel human, loved, like a normal girl, not a freak; and also find someone who loves me, wants to have babies with me, and screws my projected mapped out outcome.  
  
I look at Zack, seeing something lacking in his eyes, not strength, not intelligence, not the drive to break his limits to do what he has to do, but the look of knowing that someone had HIS back, that HE was loved.  
  
"Max?" Logan didn't like my silence.  
  
I offer him nothing in reply, and simply walk over to him, reaching out to take the baby from his arms. He gives him up without a word of protest, a silent look passes between us, like sand in an hour glass, quick but answering and asking a thousand questions.  
  
I step over to Zack, carrying my precious burden in my arms, looking to him, before I pass him my son.  
  
Zack is hesitant at first, not knowing what my motives are, but finally gets his arms to lock around Jess's small body.   
  
My son looks to this newly met uncle, pondering this strange blonde man. Zack's blue eyes stare into Jess's smaller brown ones.  
  
"You look like your mom" a simple statement, said so quiet I almost missed it even with my hearing.  
  
I lean back into Logan's arms when he comes up behind me, watching as Zack looked up at the shift of movement, observing Logan's moves on my body, almost seemingly sizing him up even more intensely then he had done in the past. Maybe because now he wasn't just a friend, he was my man.  
  
Now I am an all round ass kicking, don't call me a bitch, independent woman. I have been for a long time. And under other circumstances if someone broke into MY house to see if my husband was up to code, I'd be hauling some serious ass. Somewhere along the lines of kicking ass from here to   
Mexico, but this was different.   
  
Zack was my equal in strength so he could easily turn on me in my ass kicking stint. And he was family, not in a conventional sort of way, but this ain't a conventional world. In a world like that Zack would live down the road, and come over for barbecues on Saturday. It would be where Logan worked a nine to five suit job, and where delivering packages at Jam Pony was ACTUALLY as far as my skills went. Where we went to book clubs, and took the baby to the park and have our worst fear be that he could get a cut from a branch, not that he or Logan could be kidnapped for collateral so I turned myself in to Manticore. Where I didn't have this damn barcode on my neck, and where my siblings were all alive and could see us more then once in many months or years. Yep, convention took a back seat in this X5 family tree.  
  
"Does he know the burden of his name?" Zack's voice drew me out of my thoughts.  
  
"He's too young." I look at my son's face. " Won't remember, I want him to understand it, not just be momma babbling about something he can't comprehend"  
  
Zack now holds the baby so that he is looking him in his small face "Yours is a hard name to keep little one" he uses a tone I've heard from my childhood, the 'pay attention this is important' thing. "Your mom had a hard name too, but I thought she could deal with it ya know?" he paused, gathering his thoughts. "You know who Jesse was?" the baby looked at him, making a slight noise in his throat "She was my baby sister, like your mom. She's was taken from us, but not because she was bad, because of me"  
  
Here I wanted to interrupt, but I knew that it wouldn't have worked. It was in Zack's character to not feel responsible for our fates.  
  
"She was tough, beautiful, strong" Zack continued, "She wanted life, even the hell we knew as it. But she never got to see it. That's whatcha gotta do" Zack's voice suddenly changed "Don't be a cold detached freak like me. Stick it to Manticore for your mom and the rest of us, let them know what a childhood is really like."  
  
"Live our dream" I speak out, filling in what Zack wanted to say. I smile at him, a slow quiet one.  
  
My brother then hugs me, something he hardly ever does. He kisses my forehead, but then looks at me sternly "You are your own worst liability Maxie" he gives me back my son, touching the tiny bit of brown hair on his head.  
  
"What I want Zack" I point out "Part soldier, but all woman" I look to my son and back to my brother.   
  
A smile actually formed on his lips  
  
"Where will you go?"  
  
"Wherever I can keep it on the DL" he came back.   
  
In any other world, or any other time I would've asked Zack to stay, we have room, Logan has green, and about a thousand safe houses, but our lives aren't that simple out here in reality town. Zack would never take to it, he likes to keep moving, keep Manticore gessin' where he is. I use to be like that, no roots, always on the move, fleabag crib to fleabag crib. But now, my baby my man, my friends are all here in Seattle, Manticore will just have to recognize that I ain't goin' anywhere.  
  
"Put the blip back on the screen one time to let me know ya alive" I say half serious/half joking.  
  
Zack pulls my face up to his eye level with a finger under my chin "Take care of my nephew"  
  
"I'm already there," I inform, expecting him to leave then, but he turns to Logan.  
  
"Get her back, always" his words are no nonsense, an order to Logan, wanting him to understand excatly what he got himself into.   
  
  
"I already do Zack" Logan responds, lettin my brother know that he gets all of that.  
  
A look passes between them again before Zack leaves, disappearing out the door /Probably going down the fire escape/  
  
I still stand there, long after he left, gazing out into the dark "Wonder if he'll ever come back?"  
  
"You know him better then me Max" Logan responds, looking at me "I'm going to put him down and go back to sleep." he takes the baby from me, and I don't object "You commin'?"  
  
"Be there in a minute" I reply as he kisses me.  
  
"Don't be long" he carries the sleeping baby back to the nursery.  
  
The city noises still go on below, Seattle unaware of what has just transpired on the penthouse of a high-rise building. Zack's presence still lingers in my mind as it always does, I can still smell him. Still hear that hard ass voice, something comforting in it because he was my brother.  
  
I walk back to the bedroom and climb back in on my side. Logan pulls me to him and I reach for his hands in semi-darkness.  
  
A run of the mill moment in a married couples lives. But then again we're not most couples, so normal isn't really in the cards. But I'm starting to be glad for that.  
  
I mean so what if Zack can't stay for the weekend, only for a brief while in between months? He is still my big brother. I don't love him any less, think I even love him more 'cause of it. And who cares that I was spliced in a lab instead of being born to Ozzy and Harriet? If it weren't for that Logan and I would never have met up and Jess wouldn't have even been born.  
  
Maybe our lives are rather unconventional  
  
But you know what? I've always hated conventionality.   
  
*****   
  
END  
  
And there it is. My idea for writing this was to have a first meeting with Zack and Jess, and since Zack is this hot headed guy with a fear of exposure and a deep rooted guilt, this way fit better then dinner or a park meeting.  
  
I never posted this cause I saw something on tv that inspired me to write about Jess being taken, and then chapter three came to me, and with the stuff in there I couldn't make this fit.   
  
R/R please. The next chapter is comming, it's a 'reasearch' kinda one. 


End file.
